Interview: Rebecca Kenny

Frieda Love is the brainchild of artist and activist Rebecca Kenny. The show Frieda Loves Ya has been in development for a couple of years and last performed at Vault Festival in 2017. This year Kenny heads for the Fringe up in Edinburgh to make her debut with Frieda.

A political melange of burlesque, cabaret, silly songs and clowning; we meet Frieda Love who owns a delicatessen and has given up on love, which is a shame because her whole delicatessen is dedicated to it. Things get shaken up a little when she gets given a mystical cake called Mervin who tells her there’s a dark force in the love universe and the only person who can save it is her.

To find out if Frieda manages to save the universe and find love again book to see the show at The Underbelly, Bristo Square during the festival, and to find out more, read on!

AT: Hi Rebecca, thanks for speaking to LGBTQ Arts today, to start with, tell us a bit about the show…

RK: Frieda Love is my cabaret alter ego and she’s a clown. I like to describe it as a show that gives you a hug. It’s about bringing people together in ways where they’re differently loved, it’s very silly, it’s burlesque and cabaret and circus and it’s about finding that common ground between people with all their differences, through positive feelings.

AT: And why do you feel this piece is particularly relevant for now?

RK: The world is seeing a lot of dark times at the moment, we’re living in a very anxious place and the way politics are working are using a lot of negative feelings, hatred is becoming a tool for power, to divide people and intolerance is on the rise. For me when making Frieda in to a show I spent a lot of time thinking about these feelings that are given out daily; they’re very easy to give, but very hard to take back. So how do we rescind it? And the only way I can see that we fight against it is through opposing feelings. Giving people feelings of safety and love and joy. What we need is some lightness. Maybe silliness and love are political because through them we learn to see each other and play again.

AT: And finally what kind of evening will people have if they come to see Frieda Loves Ya?

It will be entirely bonkers. There’s an element of classic burlesque, I call it guerrilla burlesque because it’s almost like a protest, it’s unexpected. Hopefully they’ll leave feeling really great, with a little riot of joy in their pocket, and they can pay it forward if they want to.